Monday, September 28, 2015

AP: China vows billions of development dollars, debt forgiveness

Thanks LA for the heads up!

Cara Anna, Associated Press, September 26, 2015

UNITED
NATIONS (AP) — China's president on Saturday pledged billions in aid
and said Beijing will forgive debts due this year in an effort to help
the world's poorest nations, as world leaders begin to seek the
trillions of dollars needed to help achieve sweeping new development
goals.

President Xi Jinping spoke at a global summit that on Friday launched the non-binding goals for the next 15 years.

Xi and others spoke as the U.N. gathering began to shift focus from development to the high-powered General Assembly meeting that begins Monday with speeches by Xi, President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the first morning alone.
Obama and Putin will meet Monday. The prospects for any meeting between Obama and Rouhani, even a handshake, remained unclear.

Rouhani arrived Saturday and immediately was encouraged by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
to have Iran step up to help achieve political settlements to the
grinding conflicts in Syria and Yemen, where Iran has influence. The
Islamic republic is a top ally of the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad and supports Shiite Houthi rebels who have held parts of Yemen for months.
Iran's
president said in his address that the recent deal with world powers on
its nuclear program "has created suitable conditions for regional and
international cooperation," including on protecting the environment.

As
world leaders met quietly behind the scenes, others lined up to express
support for the new development push that aimed to eliminate both
poverty and hunger over the next 15 years. They replace a soon-to-expire
set of development goals whose limited success was largely due to
China's surge out of poverty over the past decade and a half.

China's
president vowed to help other countries make the same transformation.
Xi said China will commit an initial $2 billion to establish an
assistance fund to meet the post-2015 goals in areas such as education,
health care and economic development. He said China would seek to
increase the fund to $12 billion by 2030.

And
Xi said China would write off intergovernmental interest-free loans
owed to China by the least-developed, small island nations and most
heavily debt-burdened countries due this year.
He
said China "will continue to increase investment in the least developed
countries," and support global institutions, including the
Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
that is due to launch by the end of the year and is seen as a Chinese
alternative to the more Western-oriented financial institutions of the World Bank.

Ban
made a major pitch to the private sector Saturday for its help in
financing the development goals. "In a sense, September 26th is even
more important than September 25th," he told dozens of global business
leaders from companies including Google, Unilever, Siemens and Sinopec.
"Today, we begin the hard work of turning plans into reality."

As
world leaders made promises about the future, a key Jordanian leader
said they needed to pay attention to the refugee crisis now spiraling
out of control in the Mideast.

Jordan Minister Imad Najib Fakhoury
made an impassioned plea at the U.N. summit for the world's countries
to take in more Syrian refugees to help his country which has been
overwhelmed by those fleeing the conflict there.

In his address, Fakhoury said Jordan's efforts are akin to the United States having to absorb 64 million more people, or the European Union 100 million, or Japan 25 million, or China 280 million.
Lebanon Prime Minister Tammam Salam
made a similar plea, telling the United Nations the Syrian refugee
crisis was costing his tiny country one-third of its gross domestic
product and strangling development.

Salam
said the Syrian civil war and fleeing refugees "is one of the greatest
development challenges" facing Lebanon. The Mediterranean country has
become home to more than 1.2 million Syrian refugees — about a third of
Lebanon's native population.